Awkward Discussion of Race Occurs During Discussion About Awkward Discussions of Race

Chris Hayes had CBS journalist Nancy Giles and hip-hop scholar and Race Forward multimedia producer Jay Smooth on his show last night to discuss Starbucks’ embarrassing attempt at solving racism by writing on cups. Everything was going great until Giles accused Smooth of appropriating black culture, to which he had the perfectresponse.

“There would be some people that would feel that you co-opted [hip-hop], and other people might feel like that’s his background and that’s really cool, too. These are conversations, you know, ‘Yo, like ya know, yeah, if somebody takes my wallet.’ I mean, it’s really interesting,” Gilessaid.

“It’s also interesting because I’m actually black, but you assumed otherwise,” Smooth coolly retorted. “And this is the sort of awkwardness that we can look forward to at Starbucks acrossAmerica.”